Before I Say Goodbye

  “Well, let me ask you this: where did Adam get the money to buy that property on Twenty-eighth Street?”

  “He got it from me.”

  Cornelius MacDermott stared at her. “Don’t tell me you invaded your trust fund.”

  “It was mine to invade, wasn’t it? I lent Adam the money to buy that loft property and to open his own firm. If he’d actually been taking money as you imply, would he have needed to borrow from me?”

  “He would if he didn’t want to leave a paper trail. Nell, get this straight—If it comes out that your husband was involved in a bribery scandal, you can kiss your chance of being a congresswoman good-bye.”

  “Mac, at the moment I’m much more interested in protecting Adam’s memory than I am in worrying about my own political future.” This isn’t real, Nell thought, putting her hands over her face for a moment. In a few minutes I’ll wake up from a bad dream and Adam will be here and none of this will have happened.

  Nell stood suddenly and crossed to the window. Winifred, she thought. Quiet, timid Winifred. I saw her step off that elevator and immediately I knew she was going to die. Could I have prevented it? she wondered. Could I have warned her?

  From what Mac says, Walters and Arsdale are sure she was cheating. I can’t believe Adam would have taken her with him into his company if he had thought she was dishonest.

  It’s obvious, she decided. If there was bribery going on, Adam didn’t know anything about it.

  “Nell, you realize that this throws a whole new light on the explosion,” Mac said, intruding upon her thoughts. “It couldn’t have been accidental, and almost certainly it was intended to make sure that someone on that boat wouldn’t talk to the district attorney’s office.”

  It’s like the riptide, Nell thought, turning back to her grandfather. Wave after wave keeps crashing into me, and I can’t stay afloat. I’m getting drawn farther and farther out to sea.

  They talked a few minutes more about the explosion, and about the bribery scheme described by Walters and Arsdale. Sensing that Nell was drawing further and further away, Mac tried to persuade her to go out with him for dinner, but she turned him down.

  “Mac, I couldn’t swallow anything right now. But soon, I promise. Soon I’ll be able to talk about all this,” she said.

  When he left, Nell went into the bedroom and opened the door of Adam’s closet. The navy-blue jacket he had worn home from Philadelphia was on the hanger where she had hung it the next morning. When Winifred came by on Friday afternoon, I must have given her his other one, she thought, just like this one except it had silver buttons. Then this was the one he wore the day before he died.

  Nell took it off the hanger and slipped her arms through the sleeves. She had expected to feel comforted, almost as though Adam’s arms were around her, but instead she had a chilling sense of alienation, following a sudden, startling remembrance of the angry outburst between them that last morning that had caused him to rush away without it.

  Still wearing the jacket, she walked restlessly around the room. A premise, unbidden and unwelcome, was insinuating itself into her mind. Adam had been on edge for months. Besides the normal pressure of opening a new firm, had there been something else upsetting him? Was it possible that there really was something going on that she had not caught wind of? Did he have anything at all to fear from an investigation?

  She stopped for a moment and stood still, weighing what Mac had told her. Then she shook her head. No. No, I’ll never believe that, she thought.

  Thursday, June 15

  twenty-three

  AFTER GETTING THE CALL from his partner about the guy he had picked up at the marina the day before and brought in for questioning, Jack Sclafani rushed downtown to meet George Brennan.

  “It’s almost too easy,” Brennan told him. “If you look at the way it’s shaping up, this guy not only did it, but then just sat around waiting for us to pick him up.”

  He gave Jack a rundown on Jed Kaplan: “Thirty-eight years old. Raised in Manhattan, over in Stuyvesant Town, off East Fourteenth Street. Always in trouble. His juvenile court record is sealed, but as an adult he served a couple of brief terms on Riker’s Island for beating up guys in bars. Apparently he gets really mean when he hits the booze or gets into any drugs.”

  Brennan shook his head in disgust as he continued: “Father and grandfather were well-respected furriers. Mother’s a nice old lady. Family owned a loft building on Twenty-eighth Street. Adam Cauliff bought it from Kaplan’s mother at a fair enough price last year. Kaplan got back to New York last month, after five years in Australia. From what the neighbors say, he went berserk when he heard his mother had sold the building.

  “What apparently has him nuts is that the lot more than tripled in value because the Vandermeer mansion, an old building next door to it that was a historical landmark, burned down last September. You can’t be a historical landmark if you’re a pile of ashes, so that property was sold to Peter Lang, the hotshot real estate entrepreneur, who, if you remember, was the guy who was supposed to be on the boat when it blew up, but who didn’t make it to the meeting because of an accident on the way into the city.”

  Brennan looked down at his desk and reached for the container of coffee he had allowed to get cold. “Adam Cauliff was involved in a deal with Lang to build a fancy apartment-office-shopping complex on the combined parcels. He designed a tower to stand on the exact spot where the Kaplans used to hang their furs. So we’ve got motive—young Kaplan was furious that the lot had been sold for a price less than it proved to be worth—and opportunity. But is that enough to arrest and convict him? Absolutely not, but it’s a good start. Come on with me. He’s inside.”

  Kaplan looked up at him and sneered.

  Jack did not need more than one glance at Kaplan to know they were dealing with a small-time hood. Everything about his appearance said bad news: the furtive eyes; the sneer that seemed etched on his face; the way he sat at the table in a crouched position, as though he might spring up to attack—or escape. Plus the faint, sweet odor of pot clung to his clothes.

  I’ll bet he has a rap sheet in Australia too, Jack thought.

  “Am I under arrest?” he demanded.

  The two detectives looked at each other. “No, you are not,” George Brennan said.

  Kaplan pushed back his chair. “I’m out of here.”

  George Brennan waited until they were gone, then turned to his old friend and asked reflectively, “What do you think?”

  “Of Kaplan? He’s a bum,” Jack Sclafani said. “And do I think he’s capable of blowing up that boat? Yes, I do.” He paused. “What bothers me, though, is that if he did blow those people to kingdom come, I don’t think he’d be stupid enough to hang around the marina. He may be sleazy, but is he an idiot?”

  twenty-four

  IN THE HOURS shortly before dawn, Ken and Regina Tucker were startled from their sleep by shrieks of terror coming from the bedroom of their son, Ben. It was the second time since their ill-fated trip to New York City that Ben had experienced frightening nightmares.

  They both sprang from bed and raced down the hall, pushed open the door to their son’s room, flipped on the light and rushed in. Ken grabbed the little boy and held him tightly against him.

  “It’s all right, guy, it’s all right,” he said soothingly.

  “Make the snake go away,” Ben sobbed. “Make it go away.”

  “Ben, it was just a bad dream,” Regina said as she smoothed his forehead. “We’re here with you; you’re safe.”

  “Tell us about it,” Ken urged.

  “We were floating on the river, and I was looking out over the railing. And then the other boat . . .” Ben’s eyes were still closed as his voice faltered and trailed off.

  His parents looked at each other. “He’s trembling all over,” Regina whispered.

  It took almost half an hour before they were sure Ben had settled back into sleep. When they returned to their own bedroom, Ken said quietl
y, “I think we’d better get Ben to a counselor. I’m sure no expert on the subject, but from what I’ve read and picked up on TV, this looks like a case of what I believe they call post-traumatic stress syndrome.”

  He sat on the edge of the bed. “What a lousy break. You try to give your kid a memorable day in New York, and he has the hard luck to be looking straight at a boat that explodes with four people on it. I wish we’d just stayed home.”

  “Do you think he actually saw those people blown apart?”

  “With his kind of vision, he might have, the poor kid. But he’s young, and resilient. With a little help, he’ll be fine. I know it’s almost time to get up, but let’s try to get a few minutes’ more sleep. I’ve got a busy day ahead of me, and I don’t want to be dozing out right in the middle of it.”

  Regina Tucker turned off the light and lay down, moving close to her husband for comfort. Why would Ben be dreaming of snakes? she wondered. Maybe it’s because he knows I’ve always been afraid of them, she thought. I’ve probably talked about it too much around him. But that still doesn’t explain why he’s tied my fear of snakes into the nightmare about the boat.”

  Feeling wretched and guilty, she closed her eyes and willed herself to sleep, even while every sense strained to be alert for the first sound of Ben crying out in terror again.

  twenty-five

  AT THE MEMORIAL MASS for Adam Cauliff, held late on that Thursday morning, Nell sat in the first pew of the church, her grandfather and great-aunt on either side of her. She felt detached, almost like an outsider observing the ceremony. As the ritual progressed, memories washed over her, and random thoughts rushed through her mind.

  She had sat here in this same pew twenty-two years ago at exactly the same kind of Mass—for her mother and father. Their bodies, like Adam’s, had been lost in the explosion and fire when their plane crashed.

  Adam had been an only child, the son of two only children.

  I was an only child, the daughter of two only children.

  His father had died when he was in high school, his mother shortly after he finished college.

  Was that part of what drew her to him? she wondered. A shared sense of isolation?

  She remembered that on their first date, Adam had said, “I don’t go back to North Dakota anymore. I don’t have relatives there, and I feel a lot closer to the friends I made in college than I do to kids I grew up with.”

  Since Adam’s death, she hadn’t heard from any of those college friends. She didn’t think any of them were there at the Mass.

  My life was so full, she thought. So busy. There was always so much going on. I just fit Adam into my routine the way I would any new assignment or responsibility. I took him for granted in so many ways. I never pushed him to talk about his childhood. I never once asked if he’d like to have any of his old friends visit us.

  On the other hand, did Adam ever suggest that they be invited?

  I would have said yes in a minute, Nell told herself.

  The church was packed with her friends, with Mac’s friends, with the constituents who considered them family.

  Mac’s hand was under her arm, urging her to stand. Monsignor Duncan was reading the Gospel.

  Lazarus, who came back from the dead.

  Come back, Adam, please come back, she pleaded.

  Monsignor talked about the senseless violence that had taken the lives of four innocent people. Then he turned back to the altar.

  The pause before the final blessing, Nell thought, then realized that Mac had stepped into the aisle and was walking up the sanctuary steps.

  Mac stood at the lectern. “Adam was my grandson by marriage,” he began.

  Mac is eulogizing Adam, Nell thought. He didn’t tell me he was going to do that. Then she had the disturbing thought that perhaps no one else had volunteered to speak; no one else either knew Adam well enough or cared for him enough to eulogize him.

  For a moment she felt herself on the verge of hysterical laughter, as she remembered a joke Mac sometimes told at political rallies when he was poking fun at an opponent: “Pat Murphy is dead, and at the Mass, the priest gets up and asks for a few kind words about him. Now Pat, for sufficient reason, didn’t have a friend in the world, so no one stands up to speak for him. The priest again asks for a volunteer to say a few words and again no one comes forward. The third time he asks, the priest is pretty upset, and he practically shouts, ‘We’ll not be leaving this church until someone speaks for Pat Murphy.’ Hearing that, one fellow gets up and says, ‘His brother was worse.’ ”

  Adam, why isn’t there someone here to speak for you? Nell thought. Why did someone hate you enough to kill you?

  Mac had returned to the pew. Next came the final blessing, then the closing music. The Mass was over.

  As Nell walked with Mac and Gert from the church, a woman reached out and stopped her. “Could I talk to you?” she asked. “Please. It’s very important.”

  “Of course.” Nell stepped away from Mac and Gert. I know this woman, she thought. But from where?

  The woman appeared to be about Nell’s own age, and, like Nell, was dressed in black. Her eyes were puffy, and lines of grief were etched in her face. It’s Lisa Ryan, Nell thought, remembering her finally from the picture she had seen in the newspaper. Her husband Jimmy was on the boat with Adam. She phoned me after the stories came out suggesting that the explosion may have been an act of suicide, and that he may have been responsible for the deaths. When she phoned, she acknowledged that her husband had been depressed, but she insisted that he never would have deliberately hurt anyone else.

  “Mrs. Cauliff,” Lisa began hurriedly, “I wonder if I can meet with you privately. And soon. It’s very important.” She glanced around nervously. Suddenly her eyes widened, and a look of sheer panic came over her. “I’m sorry I bothered you,” she said abruptly, as she turned and rushed down the steps of the church.

  She’s terrified, Nell thought. But of what? And what was that all about?

  She looked back and recognized Detective Brennan, who along with another man was coming out of the church and approaching her. Why, she wondered, would the sight of those two men terrify Jimmy Ryan’s widow?

  twenty-six

  ON THAT THURSDAY AFTERNOON, Bonnie Wilson phoned Gert MacDermott and asked if it would be convenient for her to stop by for a brief visit.

  “Bonnie, in all honesty, today isn’t the best for me,” Gert said. “The memorial Mass for Adam Cauliff was this morning, and afterward my brother had arranged for people to go to the Plaza Athenée for lunch. I just got home. It’s been a long day.”

  “Gert, I just feel I should come by. I can be there in twenty minutes, and I promise I won’t stay more than half an hour.”

  Gert sighed as the phone clicked in her ear. After the emotional seesaw of the day, she had looked forward to simply putting on a robe and making a cup of tea.

  I wish that somewhere along the way I’d learned to be a little more assertive, more forceful, she thought. On the other hand, Cornelius is probably forceful enough for both of us, she decided.

  It was good of him to speak so beautifully about Adam, she thought. She had told him that after the service.

  “Any politician worth a damn can speak beautifully about anyone, Gert,” he had responded gruffly. “After all these years of listening to me throw the baloney, you should know that.”

  Irritated at his bluntness, she had warned him not to dare say that to Nell, and to his credit he kept his mouth shut when Nell thanked him.

  Oh, poor Nell, she reflected, remembering her demeanor at the service this morning. If only she had shown some emotion. Instead she just sat there, as though in a daze. It was almost the way she reacted to the Mass for Richard and Joan all those years ago.

  That day Cornelius had cried silently throughout the Mass. It had been ten-year-old Nell who had patted his hand and tried to comfort him. Then, as today, she had been dry eyed.

  I wish she would let me
stay with her for a little while, Gert thought. She’s not accepting Adam’s death, just not dealing with it at all. At lunch after the Mass, she had said, “It still feels so unreal.”

  Gert sighed as she crossed her bedroom and opened a closet. Dear God, I wish Bonnie hadn’t insisted on coming over right now, but at least I can change into something a little more comfortable before she gets here.

  She slipped into some slacks and a cotton cardigan, and put on comfortable slippers. She splashed water on her face and brushed her hair. Feeling somewhat refreshed, Gert went back to the living room just as the intercom buzzed and the doorman asked if she was expecting Miss Wilson.

  “I KNOW YOU would have preferred that I didn’t come,” Bonnie said as she came into the apartment, “but I felt it was necessary.” Her intense gray eyes studied Gert’s face. “Don’t worry so much,” she said calmly. “I think I can help your niece. I have a feeling you were just about to make yourself a cup of tea. Why don’t we both have one?”

  A few minutes later the two women sat across from each other at a small table in the kitchen.

  “I remember my grandmother used to read tea leaves,” Bonnie said. “She was amazingly accurate. I’m sure she had natural psychic powers that she didn’t understand. After she correctly predicted that a cousin would become very ill, my grandfather begged her to stop reading for people. He convinced her that the power of suggestion was the reason her cousin was sick.”

  Bonnie’s long fingers were wrapped around the cup. A few tea leaves had slipped through the strainer, and she stared down at them reflectively. Her black hair fell forward, shielding her face. Gert studied the younger woman with growing uneasiness. She knows something, she thought. She’s going to give me bad news. I can tell.

  “Gert, you know what independent-voice phenomena are, don’t you?” Bonnie asked suddenly.

  “Yes, of course. Or I should say I’ve heard about it. From my understanding, it’s very rare.”